


When Lost Souls Come Together

by Rhydnara



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Blood, Drell Religion, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Mythology - Freeform, Shepard's religion, Shower Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 17:45:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhydnara/pseuds/Rhydnara
Summary: A happy alternative to Drifting Tides, Lost Souls.  Featuring the same Shepard, little moments in her life when things aren't pure shit.  Some chapters will be concurrent, some chapters will be totally random.  Really this is an excuse for me to post little things that pop into my head.





	When Lost Souls Come Together

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter takes place after ME2's suicide mission but before the events of Arrival.

Blood on white porcelain.

It always makes different patterns, like smoke curling from a lit cigarette. Some wisps curl together tightly while others scatter creating thin clouds. The blood cascades down the drain in rivulets, thick and thin. A river delta, eventually combining into one source.

I scrub at my hands, not bothering to be careful. This is human blood, Cerberus blood. It was a close knife fight and I prefer to go in without my thick gloves when I have to do hand to hand work. A few of my nails are cracked where I had to dig into flesh. I just want the blood out from under them, off my hands. It’s syrupy and coagulated, some of it dry and flakey so I rake my nails across my palms to scrape it off but that just adds to the blood beneath my fingernails which makes me scrub even harder and makes the pain worse where they’re cracked. So I scrub harder and can’t tell anymore whether the blood is from the Cerberus agents or from my own sliced up palms and fresh blood swirls down the drain. 

Green hands with little specks of black dip into the sink and gently grasp mine, take hold of the scrub brush. Hands that have been trained to snap necks but somehow bring instant calm to my every movement and I feel a wall of muscle at my back as he kisses the side of my neck, whispers in my ear that I need to slow down, it’s all right. I hear a quiet “Siha,” and I let him wash the rest of the blood from under my fingernails and from my palms and up to my elbows.

I turn around and rest my face against his chest. He wraps strong arms around me and I’m enveloped in his uniquely male scent. Musk and desert sand. But I stink to high heaven so he peels my shirt off over my head. My pants are next.

I unbuckle and unzip and work his jacket off his shoulders, stripping him bare. We jump in the shower together, its cold water a shock to my system.

I’ve gotten used to cold showers. The warm ones were nice but it’s a luxury I won’t allow myself any longer. Too much humidity. Besides, it makes what comes next all the sweeter.

I shut the water off and turn to him, standing on my tiptoes to touch my lips to his. But apparently tonight, he decides we’re not going to be gentle.

He twists me around and slams me against the shower door. It’s a good thing I replaced it with aluminum oxynitride. The original tempered glass would have long shattered by now. He grabs my hands in a vice grip and places them above my head. I grasp the top of the door and stretch out, pressing my ass back against him. He takes the invitation and slaps me, hard. I grunt at the impact then grin.

Contrary to popular belief, Drell are not cold blooded. The shower cooled both of us down but everywhere our skin touches, heat blooms. His hand against my ass, his fingers digging into my breast, his lips sucking at my neck. His already hard cock sliding against the small of my back.

I used to think there was something wrong with me. None of the men I hooked up with in boot camp could keep up with me. Some of them tried turning it into a game. Outfuck the butcher. One woman named Alita in my early days, before I got my reputation, came close. But she washed out and I never saw her again.

But with Thane.

I don’t know if it’s a Drell thing or a Thane thing. Every time I look at him, smell him, feel him. From the moment he dropped out of the ceiling, cracking a few necks, to feeling him move against me now. His body just screams sex. And apparently I have the same effect on him.

With a lazy flick of his finger, I’m ready. He slides into me with a sharp thrust, no hint of the gentle lovemaking from last night. Every snap of his hips has me counting the ridging so deliciously exclusive to his species. I turn my face so my cheek is against the door to keep my head from banging into it over and over again. I grip the top of the door harder, desperately trying to keep upright so I can survive this punishing onslaught.

Sometimes I almost feel like he pushes me too hard, sets too quick of a pace. I could actually die from this. I can see the headlines.

_Commander Alexandra Shepard. Butcher of Torfan, Savior of the Citadel. Tragically fucked to death by her space boyfriend._

But no. Thane knows my limits and knows exactly how far to go. Instead I reach my climax just when he intends I do. I fly apart, gasping and crying in ecstasy seconds before he does, both of us tumbling over our peak together screaming each other’s names.

Afterwards, we lay together in bed. It used to be my bed, a major upgrade from what the Alliance provided in the SR-1. This bed, the one provided by Cerberus, seemed grotesque at first. What would an Alliance soldier - maybe a captain, sure, but still an Alliance soldier - need with a plush king with 600 thread count Egyptian cotton silken sheets? Down pillows? Acrylic mink comforter?

But with another person sharing it with me, it becomes our bed. He finally got rid of the cot down in Life Support and moved his gun collection up here. I had EDI turn the humidity in this cabin down another 10% and started using more moisturizer to deal with the dry skin. And we drained the damn fishtank because really, who needs fish when you’re fighting an intergalactic war?

So now we’re curled up in _our_ bed, him on his back and me tucked into his side. I’m tracing the finer black lines on his chest with my finger. I can’t get enough of these lines, could stare at them all day. It’s a good thing his coat covers most of them, or else it would be a major distraction on the battlefield. The post sex fog is just starting to lift when he slips into a story. This is what we do, when we’re done. We trade stories. At least, I call them stories.

We swap mythologies. He tells me all about Amonkira, Kalahira, Arashu. How Siha battled the darkness and protected the innocent. The rich history of his gods and his faith. And I tell him about Thor and Odin. Zeus and Hercules. Kali and Vishnu. I’m not sure if he’s aware that I switch religions every night, or if he thinks it’s a cohesive story, one long mythology of the same people. Humans seem to be unique in the galaxy for having such widespread faiths. It’s much easier to learn about the Asari or Hanar religions; they all believe in one set of gods. But we humans are all over the place. Still, he likes my stories. He especially loves the trickster gods – Loki, Anansi, Dotson’sa.

Sometimes, late at night, when I’m sure he’s fast asleep, I’ll whisper softly about the stories of my childhood. Rachel and Leah. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The stories that I’ve tucked away so deeply that I have trouble bringing them back up. They’re part of another lifetime, part of me that I tried to leave behind. Another me entirely. But in the silence of space, in this tiny cabin whispering to a sleeping man, I can let them go. Maybe someday I’ll tell him when he’s awake.

But not tonight. The day’s fight and ensuing…ahem. Activies. Have left me drained. I drift off to sleep listening to the soothing tones of his voice speaking about another god I’ll desperately try to remember.

I dream of sand, tents blowing in the wind. Green uromastyx wearing technicolored coats.

**Author's Note:**

> I like the fact that Thane's religion and my Shepard's original religion both have deserty origins. Something that clicked in Shepard's mind and something she can explore in her dreams, even though she'd never explore it consciously.


End file.
